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Earth's largest organism is dying + Alzhemier's disease: Herpes virus a cause?

#1
C C Offline
Humans & deer are killing Earth's largest organism (also one of the oldest)
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science...-organism/

EXCERPT: The largest living organism, not to mention one of the oldest, lives in the Fishlake National Forest in central Utah. Sometimes called the Trembling Giant, sometimes called Pando (Latin for "I spread"), it is a grove of 40,000 individual trees that function as a single organism through the connection of their roots. A new study from Utah State University shows that failed conservation efforts are leaving the magnificent organism "collapsing on our watch."

Formally called an "Aspen clone," the Pando sits on more than 106 acres and weighs a collective 13 million pounds. Scientists only have the roughest of estimates on its age, with the end of the last ice age, around 2.6 million years ago, as their best guess.

Problems with regeneration go back at least 30 or 40 years. According to the National Forest Service, "it is thought that the lack of regeneration is due to over-browsing from deer and other ungulates [hoofed animals]." The study from Utah State confirms that deer are a major problem....

MORE: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science...-organism/



Alzheimer’s disease: mounting evidence that herpes virus is a cause
https://theconversation.com/alzheimers-d...use-104943

EXCERPT: . . . my latest review, suggests a way to treat the disease. I found the strongest evidence yet that the herpes virus is a cause of Alzheimer’s, suggesting that effective and safe antiviral drugs might be able to treat the disease. We might even be able to vaccinate our children against it.

The virus implicated in Alzheimer’s disease, herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV1), is better known for causing cold sores. It infects most people in infancy and then remains dormant in the peripheral nervous system (the part of the nervous system that isn’t the brain and the spinal cord). Occasionally, if a person is stressed, the virus becomes activated and, in some people, it causes cold sores.

We discovered in 1991 that in many elderly people HSV1 is also present in the brain. And in 1997 we showed that it confers a strong risk of Alzheimer’s disease when present in the brain of people who have a specific gene known as APOE4.

The virus can become active in the brain, perhaps repeatedly, and this probably causes cumulative damage. The likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s disease is 12 times greater for APOE4 carriers who have HSV1 in the brain than for those with neither factor.

Later, we and others found that HSV1 infection of cell cultures causes beta-amyloid and abnormal tau proteins to accumulate. An accumulation of these proteins in the brain is characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease...

MORE: https://theconversation.com/alzheimers-d...use-104943
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#2
Zinjanthropos Offline
Will the world's largest organism continue on in greenhouses and nurseries to eventually set root in your back yard.? Is there a concern about genetic diversity? are they plants actually one organism or a group of same species?
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#3
C C Offline
(Oct 20, 2018 10:23 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: Will the world's largest organism continue on in greenhouses and nurseries to eventually set root in your back yard.? Is there a concern about genetic diversity? are they plants actually one organism or a group of same species?


It's a clonal colony arising from one individual quaking aspen tree of the past (perhaps over 80,000 years ago), that had the others springing up via its spreading and continually surviving root system. Part of it could surely be removed and persist under clinical care, but that wouldn't save the gigantic complex it has grown to be.

Might be a false memory, but I feel there was an X-Files episode that featured it back in the '90s (or at least before David Duchovny departed). Or the story instead revolved around a different organism modeled on the real instance (a fictional clonal colony).

~
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#4
Zinjanthropos Offline
(Oct 20, 2018 11:13 PM)C C Wrote:
(Oct 20, 2018 10:23 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: Will the world's largest organism continue on in greenhouses and nurseries to eventually set root in your back yard.? Is there a concern about genetic diversity? are they plants actually one organism or a group of same species?


It's a clonal colony arising from one individual quaking aspen tree of the past (perhaps over 80,000 years ago), that had the others springing up via its spreading and continually surviving root system. Part of it could surely be removed and persist under clinical care, but that wouldn't save the gigantic complex it has grown to be.

Might be a false memory, but I feel there was an X-Files episode that featured it back in the '90s (or at least before David Duchovny departed). Or the story instead revolved around a different organism modeled on the real instance (a fictional clonal colony).

~

Only 80,000 years. Take a look at the Wollemi Pine

Excerpt:
Quote:the most recent known fossils of the genus date from approximately 2 million years ago in Tasmania.[10][11] It is thus described as a living fossil or, alternatively, a Lazarus taxon.

Fewer than a hundred trees are known to be growing wild, in three localities not far apart. It is very difficult to count individuals, as most trees are multistemmed and may have a connected root system. Genetic testing has revealed that all the specimens are genetically indistinguishable, suggesting that the species has been through a genetic bottleneck in which its population became so low (possibly just one or two individuals) that all genetic variability was lost.[12

Have read where they are being grown in Nurseries and are available online/
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#5
C C Offline
(Oct 20, 2018 11:38 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote:
Quote:[...] Genetic testing has revealed that all the specimens are genetically indistinguishable, suggesting that the species has been through a genetic bottleneck in which its population became so low (possibly just one or two individuals) that all genetic variability was lost. [12]

Have read where they are being grown in Nurseries and are available online/

Kind of like the so-called "onion cedar", that comes to mind, which was logged to extinction apart from a single survivor. Except that I now discover that I've slipped into an alternate universe where that never happened to it. Additionally the version of the tree here apparently does not grow as robust as the all but vanished species that resided in the Australia of my lost version of Earth.

Oh well... At least I finally, haphazardly got the personal "proof" for something I've suspected in recent years. There have been other signs of either parallel-cosmos crossover or time-travel tampering with history, but this is the one that definitely clinches it. (Not publicly -- what a folly that would be! But solely a convincing revelation for me.)

So it will have to be the Pennantia baylisiana instead that fits the bill of one specimen remaining, and the delightfully cramped bottleneck awaiting its future descendants should it miraculously endure.

A feature of quasi-extinct vegetation like this seems to be that such doesn't warrant a common name, only the mouthful of taxonomy. "Oh, that one? He's going to be dead in a few hours or days, anyway. So don't bother christening him with a compassionate handle at this late stage of the game. He's got that perfectly fine number that the experts assigned to him on paper, after the grunts dug him up unconscious from ruins of the collapsed Refugee Center."

Woops, my bad. I guess the non-existent native population tweaked the plant's cheeks and gave it a homey moniker after all, derived from the island group: Three Kings Kaikomako.

~
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#6
Syne Offline
(Oct 21, 2018 02:45 AM)C C Wrote: Except that I now discover that I've slipped into an alternate universe where that never happened to it. Additionally the version of the tree here apparently does not grow as robust as the all but vanished species that resided in the Australia of my lost version of Earth.

Oh well... At least I finally, haphazardly got the personal "proof" for something I've suspected in recent years. There have been other signs of either parallel-cosmos crossover or time-travel tampering with history, but this is the one that definitely clinches it. (Not publicly -- what a folly that would be! But solely a convincing revelation for me.)

Nah, just the fallibility of human memory. Parsimonious explanation.
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#7
RainbowUnicorn Offline
(Oct 20, 2018 11:13 PM)C C Wrote:
(Oct 20, 2018 10:23 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: Will the world's largest organism continue on in greenhouses and nurseries to eventually set root in your back yard.? Is there a concern about genetic diversity? are they plants actually one organism or a group of same species?


It's a clonal colony arising from one individual quaking aspen tree of the past (perhaps over 80,000 years ago), that had the others springing up via its spreading and continually surviving root system. Part of it could surely be removed and persist under clinical care, but that wouldn't save the gigantic complex it has grown to be.

Might be a false memory, but I feel there was an X-Files episode that featured it back in the '90s (or at least before David Duchovny departed). Or the story instead revolved around a different organism modeled on the real instance (a fictional clonal colony).

~

Quote:Or the story instead revolved around a different organism modeled on the real instance (a fictional clonal colony).

possibly the giant underground fungus.
(the real one) is several acres in size i believe.

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141114-...-the-world
humungus fungus

Quote:The parasitic and apparently tasty honey fungus not only divides opinions; it is also widely seen as the largest living organism on Earth.

More precisely, a specific honey fungus measuring 2.4 miles (3.8 km) across in the Blue Mountains in Oregon is thought to be the largest living organism on Earth.


i could be wrong, im just guessing
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#8
C C Offline
No similarity to trivial, murky recollections like what one ate at noon on a Saturday two or more weeks ago. This is facetiously equivalent to going to bed with Abraham Lincoln historically being the 16th POTUS and waking up to a world with a different set of facts where he was not.

My guess that makes it right again is that the claim of there being only one surviving onion cedar tree dated back to an era (pre-1970s?) when even many members of the concerned agencies may have been oblivious to the extent of feral regrowth occurring at the old logging sites. (And accordingly, no specimens for the greenhouses and planting programs to play with yet, either.) Anything that wasn't the large, stout onion cedars of yore simply didn't register on their woodland "radars" back then. Any current, stunted size of the onion cedar in turn resulting from competing with other rival trees that now have acquired a foothold, not having the time to grow much before being cleared or brush hogged by whatever landowner project, and other compromising conditions.

NSW-Rainforest-Trees-Part-VIII: Apparently it was greatly favoured by cutters in earlier days, who soaked the logs in streams to remove the characteristic onion odour. It was then sawn and sold as red cedar. This accounts for the presence of only small regrowth trees today.

Notes by George Baur: Onion Cedar (Owenia cepiodora) was effectively confined to the Richmond and Tweed valleys and neighbouring areas in Queensland, but was apparently common within this limited area [...] The timber was regarded as a substitute for Red Cedar, its initially offensive smell of rotten onions being only transitory. Once the large Cedars had mostly disappeared this species was favoured in their place, and combined with a limited natural range and the widespread clearing of much of this range, the species effectively ceased to exist as a large tree, though it is now known that regrowth occurs in parts of the still forested sites of its earlier occurrence. This appears to be one of the rare examples where logging has significantly contributed to the endangerment of a tree in Australia. In the late 1970s the Forestry Commission organised an initial collection of seed and raising of plants of this species, and today Onion Cedar is almost an obligatory inclusion in rainforest tree planting schemes in the Richmond-Tweed district, where its seedlings show a moderate to fast growth rate.


~

(Oct 21, 2018 05:42 AM)RainbowUnicorn Wrote: possibly the giant underground fungus. (the real one) is several acres in size i believe.

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141114-...-the-world
humungus fungus

Quote:The parasitic and apparently tasty honey fungus not only divides opinions; it is also widely seen as the largest living organism on Earth.

More precisely, a specific honey fungus measuring 2.4 miles (3.8 km) across in the Blue Mountains in Oregon is thought to be the largest living organism on Earth.

i could be wrong, im just guessing


Yah, thanks. At least one reviewer refers to the Field Trip episode as involving a "giant fungal colony". So could have been the inspiration. But not going to spend 45 minutes watching one of those blurry youtube versions of an X-Files installment -- that somebody uploaded from a video file which originally had a prehistoric, mildew-ridden VHS cartridge from 1999 as its source -- to find out for sure.

~
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